King Kong is on the loose! He's kidnapped a lady, scaled a tall building, and has started chucking bombs at the player's hero. The mission is simple enough: climb the ladders, avoid the bombs, and rescue the damsel. Sound familiar? It should. King Kong was a lousy Donkey Kong clone for the Atari VCS which existed, in part, to justify Universal Studios' lawsuit against Nintendo and Coleco at the time the game was released. Universal had sued both of these parties, claiming that Donkey Kong was an attempt to undermine their copyright on the King Kong character and films. To prove its point, Universal granted Tiger Electronics the rights for both an Atari VCS cartridge and a handheld electronic game based on King Kong, so they could demonstrate that their products were being damaged by Donkey Kong's use of similar concepts. In the end, however, it was discovered that the King Kong copyright wasn't Universal's to defend, as they themselves had craftily waited until the character from the original B&W film (produced by RKO Studios) was in the public domain before they made a big-screen remake. King Kong on the Atari VCS has about as much merit as Universal's lawsuit did, with roving bombs that can easily outrun the player's man (and they can climb ladders to catch him too -- neat trick!) and gameplay that pales next to Coleco's Donkey Kong game for the VCS.

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